Archives for May 2006

The long awaited Ask.com Blog Search Engine has finally launched. There are two iterations: One for Ask.com in the form of another right side option. The other within Bloglines.com. The Ask.com blogs and feeds search is directed more towards general users. The Bloglines versions offers more advanced options for “prosumers” as Kaushal Kurapati from Ask.com called them in our preview call.

Key features include the use of Ask.com “expert rank” which breaks the web into communities and defines subject specific link popularity. This is combined with Bloglines.com subscription data to determine relevance in blog and feed search results.

Another key feature is the quality of content. Ask.com Blogs and Feeds search is available in 20 languages with 4-6 million articles indexed per day. There are 1.5 billion articles indexed overall. Blogs and feeds that are indexed only include the feeds that Bloglines users have subscribed to.

Today I had a nice marathon meeting on a SEO project for a larger client that, despite the length, was a pleasure. With this project our SEO firm was brought in during the planning stages of a major web site overhaul that included siginificant front and back end enhancements. The project involves an advertising agency responsible for branding and overall creative direction and an IT consulting / web development firm that is tasked with all the programming, integration and web site implementation. And of course, there’s us.

There are interesting dynamics in this situation as you can imagine. The ad agency wants big graphics, the web developers aren’t keen on extra efforts to make urls search engine friendly and we’re asking for more text every chance we get. But overall its very civil and all parties have the client’s best interests in mind.

Over time I plan on adding more scheduled topics and features to Online Marketing Blog. The most recent has been the “Spotlight on Search” series of interviews. The newest is, “TopRank Basic SEO Tips” which will cover fundamental how-to’s on search engine optimization. The SEO tips topics will be motivated by client and prospect questions that our team answers daily.

So on to the first TopRank Basic SEO Tip: Let the Spider Crawl

For most sites, one of the first things we check is to make sure the site crawler friendly. “Crawler friendly” you say? What the heck does that mean? Search engines find sites mostly by following links from sites that are already known to find new sites and pages. The sofware programs that search engines use to perform this task are often called “Bots” or “Spiders”. You get the analogy right? “Web”, “Spiders”, “Crawl”.

This is a re-post, with minor edits, from my blog, Blog on a Stick. I felt that it was worthy of posting here too.
-Thanks Thomas

For those that are just jumping into the blog world, or the Web 2.0 world for that matter, there is a new idea out there called tagging. Much like folders or categories, it’s a way of keeping things organized.

Lets start out simple with folders.

On your computer you have folders. Maybe a documents folder for paperwork, pictures folder for pictures and so on. You’ve probably even created your own folders. “Christmas 2005” or “Work Documents” The idea is to keep your files organized on your hard drive. Simple enough.

While I was doing a little research for interview questions with Yahoo SEO Program Manager, Laura Lippay, I noticed a post she made about the pros and cons of performing search engine optimization on web sites while they are being designed or redesigned compared to after the fact.

Laura makes some great points about the need to involve SEO at the planning stages of a web site, not after it’s been launched. This really stikes a chord since so many companies call our SEO firm saying things like, “We’ve nearly finished our new web site design and are now looking for a SEO firm to help market the site.” You can hear a pin drop when we explain how much could have been saved (time/money) had we been brought in during the early stage of the site design.

In the past I’ve written tips about marketing business blogs with an emphasis on content, frequency and distribution. Just like with optimizing web sites for better search engine rankings, there’s an abundance of information and tips on how to use blogs for business.

As far as business blogs go, the two implementations that I see most often are blogs as a component of SEO or blogs as a public relations tool. Granted, this bias is a manifestation of the focus of my company’s blog consulting practice, but I think the insight into what’s been working can benefit any type of blog.

I am pleased to announce the addition of Melinda Cayetano and Anna Kummet to our team. Anna joins us as a Public Relations Associate and Melinda has joined the team as a Search Marketing Specialist. Both have a background in public relations.

When you think of authorities on web analytics, one person that should be on your list is Eric T. Peterson. Eric is currently Vice President with the Visual Sciences division of web analytics firm, WebSideStory, is the author of several books on web measurement and moderates several popular discussion lists on analytics. He also manages an excellent site on web analytics called Web Analytics Demystified. He previously worked as an analyst with JupiterResearch and has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, Business 2.0 and others as an expert on the topic.
Eric will be speaking at a MIMA event tomorrow evening here in Minneapolis so I thought I would check in with him and do a little interview.

Photo courtesy Strikepoint Blog
There are many success stories on the web and one of the most interesting is WebmasterRadio.FM. The brainchild of Old, Old School SEO Daron Babin and his partner Brandy Shapiro, WebmasterRadio.FM has become the “go to” resource for live streaming radio and podcasts on all things related to search and interactive marketing.

After threatening Daron with sex, fame and a nice hangover, he succumbed to answering a few questions about how he got into the SEO game, what’s up with New Gen Media and his evil plan for a multi media search engine and delivery platform.

Tell us about your background, how did you get involved with search marketing?

SearchEngineFeeds.org has a slew of search engine related blog feeds worth checking out. There was some type of voting, and the feed for Online Marketing Blog (being called the Top Rank Blog for some reason) was listed in the top five SEO feeds.

Since my favorite SEO related blogs (Aaron, Loren, Barry, Andrew, Rand, Jim, Todd, Andy, Matt (who now beats me for the #1 spot on Google for “seo blog” hmmm), Danny and many more – sorry not enough time to list them all) that I know to be the “actual” most popular and respected seo blog feeds are not in the top list – I have to take the voting with a grain of salt. Actually, it’s good to take any kind of ranked list lightly. They can never be 100% accurate. But, I’ll take the link anyway 🙂